I’m Pink Lady Apple Yeggs and my friend, and brother-in-law, Deviled Yeggs suggested that I record each project that I set up in the hopes of reforming the people who continue to work for Lily the Pink Enterprises.  If for no other reason, it would show how God is at work.

But for this day, we were simply relaxing.  And Zuzka and I had a little surprise for everyone.

Dev Yeggs and Naomi had their three younger children, with Jemima and Easter off chasing a hurricane or something like that.  Blaise had invited Margie, and Sophie had invited Emmett.  I told Emmett that his parents and little sisters could join us.  His parents went to the farm.  There were going to be fireworks off County Line Road in Stout County.  They were afraid the animals would get skittish.  But Arabella and Sarah welcomed seeing the rooftop barbecue.  Since Blake Williams built the grill, I invited Blake and Penny Williams and the ver Waarloosd family.  TomCat had not celebrated much freedom in the valley of the windmills, unless you consider the freedom to be oppressed and controlled by someone purporting to be a preacher.  All my extended family was present, and Dev Yeggs said that he had already invited the Harts and the Wednesdays to his house.  So, the more the merrier.  Maeve and Thou were even there.  Dorothy Cahn, aka Dot Com, and a couple of the pastors, were having a big cookout at the mission, so Maeve thought they might handle any counseling that was requested.  Even for a few hours, a minivacation was welcome, but it was the life Maeve felt she was called to.  And I also invited the five MacDougalls, and since Samuel Farquharson was free, he came along also.  That made it roughly sixty people on my roof.  Not really, it was a maintenance platform above the roof.

The mayor, Boaz, my oldest child, told the city council that with competing fireworks at the county line, at the stadium downtown, and at the Hoity Toity Club, he could not be everywhere, so he would spend the evening at his mother’s house.  He was learning how to play politics.

Zuzka’s idea of a rooftop barbecue was wonderful, but it was a backhanded idea.  Zuzka, a victim of human trafficking, had designed everything for the Crystal Mountain while a slave of Baldwyn Apple at the brothel.  But she did not think of the heavy maintenance load.  To reach the outside of the mountain, she had to build a platform in a couple of places.  She just made both platforms extra-large.  The mechanical engineers from T.R.U.S.T. said that the platforms could hold one hundred full-sized adults.  We had about half that many people and nearly half of them were children.  I had invited Joseline and Kevin, but they were at the Johnson’s house, trying to mend the relationship between Joseline and her mother-in-law.  They might have gone to one of the fireworks demonstrations.

Dev volunteered to be the grill master, but he had to get instructions from Blake.  Blake made everything out of brick and steel.  Just turning it on you had to make decisions.  It could work off direct heat, indirect, wood chips, pellets, or propane.  It had a slow-cook smoker chamber, a huge grill, and a steamer chamber.  And you had to decide whether you wanted the fan on for convection heating or an induced draft.  Since Dev was grilling hot dogs and hamburgers, some of them veggie burgers, he only needed the grill, but Blake showed him how he could steam the hot dogs instead.  But even he agreed that for the fourth of July, charring them a little on the grill seemed the right thing to do.  But Blake insisted stacking corn on the cob, potatoes, onions, and peppers in the smoker.  He insisted that everyone would love the caramelization and flavor.  He admitted that he and his father built one like it, and he had a knack for remembering how to build things once he had built one.  I am thinking that if Jim Kaiser and Blake get together, Blake may start his own business.

The Harts came by themselves.  Lilith and her husband, getting married a day or two after the storm chasers, were going to have a concert at the mission after the fireworks were over.  Dot Com promised to have it recorded and give a copy to the Harts.

Zuzka had installed an elevator in the hallway between Pink’s office and GrandPa and Gwen’s “little” five-bedroom house that replaced the bedroom that Gwen used to have, sharing the rest room with me.

We joked and laughed.  Dev served great Independence Day food.  They all thanked Blake for the grill, but also the smoked veggies.  The onions and peppers were a fantastic addition to the burgers and hot dogs.  The teenagers said the potato planks were better than French Fries any day.

Then, Zuzka invited everyone up to the upper deck.  She said that the exhaust from the Crystal Mountain should be over, but if we like a nice outdoor sauna, we could move our loungers next to the exhaust vents.  When the top of the mountain gets too much hot air, the vents blow across the upper deck, handy for data collection and inspection of the equipment.

The conversations shifted to the view.  Zuzka had added even more height to the mountain, and we were near the top.  Tuesday said that she could recognize houses and businesses on County Line Road and even beyond into Stout County.  We could see the guest house at the Hoity Toity Club.  We could see the sports complex near the city center, a reclamation project in a poor part of town.  Naomi pointed out the T.R.U.S.T. Medical Center and a few university buildings.

Everyone had the information that was the surprise, but no one pieced it all together, until the fireworks started over the football stadium.  We could see things better from our vantage point than they could in the stadium.  We just did not get the red-hot embers falling from the sky onto us, seated comfortably atop the Crystal Mountain.  But within two minutes of the stadium fireworks, the fireworks at the Hoity Toity club started.  Again, we had perfect access to the fireworks, not blocked by any of the club buildings.  And within another couple of minutes, the county line fireworks started.  We could sit in loungers and see all three fireworks demonstrations.  The only drawback was that you did not know which one to watch at what time until the end.  The stadium show’s finale was huge, and it ended just as the Hoity Toity finale began.  As the Hoity Toity finale ended, the county line erupted with its finale.  For the infants and toddlers, they were less than impressed.  But the older kids were loving it.

Captain Hart said, “Don’t let anyone know about your front row seats.  Everyone will want to watch from here next year.  This was mind-blowing.”

And whether you see fireworks where you live or not…

Happy Fourth of July

Credits

About our second or third year in Pennsylvania, I walked into our backyard to watch the town’s fireworks on the Fourth of July.  It is one of the biggest in the area outside the huge ones over the sports complex downtown, the Volunteer Fire Department’s biggest fundraiser of the year.  But I heard some noise in the front yard.  I walked through the house and onto the front porch to see another fireworks display in a town a few miles further down the valley.  And while I watched their fireworks, I saw the beginning of the huge fireworks over Three Rivers Stadium, before it was imploded to make room for the baseball park and the football stadium.  I finally found a spot between my house and the neighbor’s house where I could see all three at the same time.  It was not the best seat in the house, but I do not think the three venues have had their fireworks at the same time ever since then.

And I had been teaching in Midlothian, Texas, on the south side of Dallas many years ago, just before the Fourth of July, one of my hottest training sessions ever (teaching how to operate an industrial furnace).  My wife had spent nearly a month visiting her sisters, starting in a northern suburb of Dallas, going near the Louisiana border and then to Houston and Port Arthur, Texas, being shuttled from one home to another.  I went to Port Arthur, Texas to pick her up and the entire family, almost, was there to see the fireworks.  The fireworks were being launched from Pleasure Island, south of the intercoastal waterway, and the viewing was north of the waterway, on the levee, known as Port Arthur’s River Walk.  The clouds were starting to roll in, but they did not anticipate stormy weather.  Yet, the change in barometric pressure and the clouds, acting as a backdrop to the fireworks, created a downdraft.  The weather was deemed marginal, so they went ahead with the celebration.  As the fireworks went off, a wonderful demonstration, the embers did not have enough time to cool off completely before they showered onto the spectators.  You saw the fireworks and you were stung at the same time.  No one seemed to mind the tiny burns.  Most people laughed, saying that this fireworks celebration made them “tingle.”  It was interpreted as part of the celebration.  Leave it up to Texans to just go with it and have fun.